CVE-2026-68968 Apache Airflow: Authorization bypass in the Backfill API through conflicting interpretations of the backfill id
Authenticated users can bypass authorization checks to read, pause, or cancel backfills of other Dags due to inconsistent ID parsing logic.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-68968?
CVE-2026-68968 is a high-severity missing authorization vulnerability in Apache Airflow, published on 12 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Apache Airflow's Backfill API authorized a request against a Dag id supplied by the caller whenever the `backfill_id` path segment failed to parse. The authorization dependency parsed it with `int()` while the route handler parsed it as pydantic's `NonNegativeInt`, which accepts values `int()` rejects (`1.0` coerces to `1`); FastAPI resolves dependencies before endpoint validation, so the two acted on different Dags. An authenticated user holding edit permission on any single Dag could therefore read, pause and cancel backfills belonging to any other Dag, including moving another Dag's queued runs to `failed`. No non-default configuration is required and backfill ids are sequential, so finding a target is trivial. Users are advised to upgrade to apache-airflow 3.3.1 or later, which parses the backfill id with the same type the routes declare.
Weakness: CWE-436
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-68968?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including apache-airflow and airflow. It affects 1 product.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 3.3.1 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 3.3.1 |
apache-airflow PyPI | All versions | 3.3.1 |
airflow Bitnami | All versions | 3.3.1 |
Products include Apache Airflow.
How do I fix CVE-2026-68968?
Upgrade apache-airflow to 3.3.1 or later.
Upgrade, and check permissions on every request on the server, not only in the interface. More about Missing authorization.
Is CVE-2026-68968 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-68968 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Apache Airflow
- CVE-2020-13927 Apache Airflow's Experimental API Authentication Bypass
- CVE-2020-11978 Apache Airflow Command Injection
- CVE-2026-33264 Apache Airflow: DAG author RCE on webserver via unrestricted import_string() in BaseSerialization.deserialize()
- CVE-2023-25754 Apache Airflow: Privilege escalation using airflow logs
- CVE-2023-22884 Apache Airflow, Apache Airflow MySQL Provider: Arbitrary file read via MySQL provider in Apache Airflow
Sources
Also known as BIT-airflow-2026-68968, CLEANSTART-2026-OM50067, ECHO-15a1-9bf1-c341, GHSA-j4jc-cq9h-xrhr, MINI-67mw-5rpc-r3p2, MINI-6cwc-5h8g-5cjh and 1 more.